cd-burning/tapeing rdiff-backups?

Gregor Zattler texmex@uni.de
Tue, 3 Sep 2002 13:10:54 +0200


Hi Ben,
* Ben Escoto <bescoto@stanford.edu> [02. Sep. 2002]:
> >>>>> "GZ" == Gregor Zattler <texmex@uni.de>
> >>>>> wrote the following on Mon, 2 Sep 2002 22:16:42 +0200

Yes, i wasn't clear enough. 

>     Maybe I still don't get your question, but this seems unrelated to
> rdiff-backup to me.  rdiff-backup doesn't support tapes, just file
> systems.  If, after rdiff-backup is run, you have some way of backing
> up a file system onto a tape, then sure, that would work, as
> rdiff-backup just writes files like any other program.

That is what i want to do:  Manipuilate a rdiff-backup (the files
which are in the backup directory after rdiff-backup run).

My Problem is: I how to handle this heap of files.  Thinking
secondary backups.  There is the mirror, thats easy.  But I do not
know which files (increments, snapshots, diffs, dirs) in the
../backup/rdiff-backup directory i have to (copy, move, delete)
to achive a certain result.
 
GZ>> How do i achive the copying of the incremets? Would cp -a
GZ>> /backup/*2002.07.* /backbackup catch all necessary files?
 
> No, the backup files will be in several directories in
> /backup/rdiff-backup-data.  
?? but "cp -a" also traverses directorys?

> You could use rsync maybe:
> 
> rsync -a /backup/rdiff-backup-data /backupbackup

This copys everything.  I want to copy only the increments,
snappshots, dirs, diffs, missings say of July.

My rdiff-backup slowly gets to large.  Say i can hold only one
month of increments on disk.  I can --remove-older-than increments
to free Diskussion space.  But before i do that i want to backup
this increments to CDs.  I want to do this every month.  So in the
unprobably but not impossible case i want to restore a file in a
the status months ago i can somehow[1] restore the rdiff-backup
directory from CD using say tar or cpio and then restore this file
as of 2002-03-27 using rdiff-backup.


[1] This may involve buying a new hard Diskussion for the large
    rdiff-backup or repartitioning or ...

Ciao, Gregor
-- 
"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet."
-- William Gibson